It is the ability of texts to draw upon features of the world and present them to the viewer, not simply as reflections, but more so as constructions. Hence, the images don't portray reality in an unbiased way with 100% accuracy, but rather, present 'versions of reality' influenced by culture and people's habitual thoughts and actions.
In a world dominated by print and electronic media, our sense of reality is increasingly structured by narrative. Feature films and documentaries tell us stories about ourselves and the world we live in. Television speaks back to us and offers us 'reality' in the form of hyperbole and parody. Print journalism turns daily life into a story. Advertisements narrativise our fantasies and desires.
We often analyse representations in the media according to categories such as; age, disability, gender, socio-economic grouping, race, nationality and sexuality.
Ideology
An ideology is a belief system that is constructed and presented by a media text. Media texts represent the world in order to support a dominant ideology. Eg; newspapers often promote the dominant ideology of patriotism through their representation of race and nationality.
Some dominant ideologies...
- Capitalism; the production of capital and consumption of surplus value as a life goal.
- Patriotism; To love, support and protect one's country and its people.
- Marriage and Family; The 'right way' to live is to marry an opposite sex partner and have children.
- Male superiority; Men are more suited to positions of power and more suited to decision making at work and at home.
Many dominant ideologies are extremely culture-specific, for example; Christian fundamentalism as a political force in the USA, Shariah Law is some Muslim countries, the principle of individual freedom in the Netherlands.
Dominant ideologies are central to people's belief systems. It is often difficult or impossible to challenge them effectively.
Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic; power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media. Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Examples of hegemonic values include:
- The police are always right
- It's important to be slim
- A credit card is a desirable status symbol
- Mass immigration is undesireable
- The poor are lazy and deserve their hardship
- Men are better drivers than women
Antonio Gramsci
An Italian political theorist who is renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. His theory means that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class and that everyday practices and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems for domination.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are characters in a media text who are 'types' rather than complex people. Stereotypes are often defined by their role, such as 'bad cop' or 'nice old lady'.
Children's media texts often use stereotypes so a young audience can identify quickly with the characters.
Stereotypes are usually negative representations considered to be too reductive. Many are considered offensive, such as 'drunken Irishman' or 'over-emotional woman'.
Extension/restriction of our experience of reality
By giving audiences information, media texts extend experience of reality. Every time you see a media text, you extend your experience of life but in a second-hand way. However, because the producers of the media text have selected and constructed the information we receive, then our experience is restricted.
Process and product
Representation involves not only how identities are represented (or constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the process of reception.....
THE GAZE
The gaze refers to how an audience views the way people are represented in the media.
The gaze can be charactered by who is doing the looking:
- The spectator's gaze: the spectator who is viewing the text; often us, the audience of a certain text.
- Intra-diegetic gaze: where one person depicted in the text is looking at another person or object in the text, such as another character looking at another.
- Extra-diegetic gaze: where the person depicted in the text looks at the spectator, such as an aside, or acknowledgement of the 'fourth wall'.
- The camera's gaze: which is the gaze of the camera and if often equated to the director's gaze.
- Intra-intra-diegetic gaze: such as Bart&Lisa watching Itchy&Scratchy in The Simpsons.
LAURA MULVEY'S MALE GAZE THEORY...
The male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may focus on the curves of a woman's body; putting you the viewer in the eyes of a male. However, it is only the Male Gaze Theory if these curves are highlighted with specific conventions such as slow motion, deliberate camera movements and cut aways. Male Gaze is very common in James Bond films
The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance. Women can ore often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only view themselves from a man's perspective.
However the presence of a woman in mainstream film texts is vital. Often female characters have no real importance themselves, it is how she makes the male feel that is the importance, many females only exist in relation to the male. The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies in our society.
Mulvey states that the role of a female character in a narrative has two functions;
- As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
- As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view
Gender roles;
The characters that look at others are seen as the active role (MALE)
The characters that are to be looked at are passive (FEMALE). They are under control of the males gaze and only exist for visual pleasure.
Females often slow down the narrative and act as inspiration for men to act.
Males on the other hand, push the narrative forward and make things happen (are active).
Patriarchal society = men dictate the rules; Mulvey argues that we live in a patriarchal society in which men set the majority of the rules and construct and represent the ideal visions, roles and male dominance over women.
Objectification is related to the gaze - the persons gazed at are objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed or possessed by the voyeur.
SOME MORE THEORIES....
Psychoanalysis and 'The Mirror' - Lacan
Lacan's theory about 'the mirror' is an idea around the idea of identity. He considers the point at which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity. he considers the point at which a child recognises their own reflection and begin to consider how others perceive them, modifying their appearance to satisfy their perceptions of how others see them. Mulvey extends this idea when she writes about 'the silver screen' which she suggests operates like a metaphorical mirror; reflecting back to the female viewer representations of female identity, but these representations aren't genuine reflections of the viewer but rather male perceptions of idealised femininity.
Queer Theory - Judith Butler
Queer theory challenges the idea that gender is part of the essential self, that is fixed, immovable - in . other words, our male/female gender doesn't control all aspects of our identity or how we perceive other peoples identity. Gender is fluid and flexible depending on the context in which it is seen. EG Tom Cruise plays a heterosexual pilot in The Right Stuff but although he is male he's seen as having "queer" attributes.
The theory developed as a way of combating negative representations of gay sexuality in the media, it combats the idea that people should be divided and categorised due to their sexual orientation or practice and that a persons' identity shouldn't be limited to their sexual preference.
Subculture- Representation of Groups - Dick Hebdidge
Dick Hebdidge said that subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel negelcted by scoietal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong.
Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which subculture can be recognised:
- Often have negative relationship to work
- negative or ambivalent relationship to class
- Through their associations with territory (The street, the hood, the club) rather than property
- Through their stylistic ties to excess
- Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups rather than family)
- Through their refusal to engage with what they might see as the 'banalities' of life
Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affections like tattoos etc. Subcultural values often associated with being cool.
Traditionalist vs Post Traditionalist views of society - Anthony Giddens
Media representations of society can be seen as traditional or post traditionalist. Traditional societies are ones in which individual choice was limited by its dominant customs and traditions, where as, post traditionalist societies are one where the ideas set by previous generations are less important than those of individuals. Post traditional societies no longer feel so dependent and limited to time and place. Gidden says, we are living in a post traditional society where we are much less concerned with precedents set by previous generations and that our options are only limited by what the public opinion and law allows.
Interconnectivity of race, class and gender - Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks wrote "Ain't I A Woman? Lack, women and femininity" in 1981. It focused on the perpetuation of systems of oppression and domination in the media paying particular attention to the devaluation of black womanhood. The idea of 'lack' or 'otherness' refers to way that women and ethnic minorities are usually represented as 'other'. Their primary purpose is simply to be other than the norm - they are therefore known more by the context of lack than by a realised or complex identity. This theory can be linked to ideas of the monstrous feminine found in feminist analysis of literature and art.
No comments:
Post a Comment